Ibrahim Abbud

Ibrahim Abbud

Ibrahim Abbud ( Arabic إبراهيم عبود, DMG Ibrāhīm ʿAbbūd , alternative spelling Abboud ) (born October 26, 1900 in Mohammed-Gol; † September 8, 1983 in Khartoum ) was President of Sudan from 1958 to 1964 .

youth

Abbud was born near the city of Suakin on the Red Sea . He belonged to the Northern Sudanese Shaigi ethnic group, his father worked for the British administration . After attending school in his hometown, he attended the Gordon Memorial College in Khartoum from 1914 . In 1917 he passed the final exam and entered a cadet school .

soldier

In July 1918 he joined the Sudanese battalions of the Egyptian army as a lieutenant of the pioneers . When the Sudanese Army was founded in 1925, which was set up between the Kingdom of Egypt and Great Britain as a result of the Sudan crisis , he was taken over into it. During the Second World War he was deployed in East and North Africa. He continued his career in the British Army, which was under British command: in 1948 he became a staff officer in the Camel Corps, in 1949 he was the first Sudanese to command a unit, in 1954 he became Chief of Staff in March and one of the Deputy Commander in Chief of the Sudanese Army in August .

president

After Sudan's independence on January 1, 1956, he was appointed Commander- in - Chief. Originally, he stayed away from politics. Due to his high reputation and influence as the oldest and highest-ranking officer, the leader of the Umma party, the former general and Prime Minister Abdullah Chalil , who has been in power since July 1956, asked him to intervene against the new government after the elections in spring 1958. On November 17, 1958, the military coup took place under Abbud's leadership. Chalil initially withdrew from politics and Abbud became president and head of government of the country as head of a twelve-member junta . In terms of foreign policy, he sought cooperation with both the West and the Eastern Bloc . In October 1961 he visited the US President John F. Kennedy . Domestically he was very popular at first, but was increasingly confronted with revolts, conspiracies and the civil war in South Sudan . He had support from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the political arm of the Khatmiyya brotherhood under Sayyid Ali al-Mirghani.

In late 1961, General Abbud promised a new constitution and later ordered the release of prominent political prisoners. On November 15, 1964, he resigned after violent protests and handed over the official business to a civil government under al-Khatim al-Khalifa .

literature

• Ronald Segal: African Profiles . Prestel, Munich 1963, DNB 454637233

Web links

• Prime Ministers of Sudan. Photo and short CV on the website of the Sudanese Embassy in Canada
• Ibrahim Abbud in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)